What if the Confederates staged a guerilla war against the US after the Civil War for lets say...a decade. How would this change Reconstruction? How would the US respond?
WI: Prolonged Confederate Guerilla War
- Thread starter ThatOneGuy
- Start date
The Union army would fall on them like a ton of bricks. People act like no one even considered this in OTL and it was some great trump card that Lee graciously turned aside for reasons of morals. It wasn't done because it would have been suicide and small groups that tried were annihilated. The South was fully occupied by a very large and well-supplied army that had no qualms against taking strong actions to assert political control.
One has to answer a few questions first such as why it starts. Some did want to start partisan activity, but many of the biggest didn't OTL. That leaves a shallow insurgency if it had broken out most likely in Appalachia and parts of the Deep South here and there if we are talking after Appomattox. I can't see the Congress paying to maintain hundreds of thousands of troops there for a decade so the resolution of such an insurgency so the fallout depends heavily on who the government enlists to fight localized partisans; the former southern officers who did give up, the minority population or both.
Insurgencies come in different shapes and sizes so if you are talking a major insurgency it would really need a different end to the war. Most soldiers were going to emulate what they saw Lee do at the end assuming they saw him do anything.
A major insurgency I suspect could only have started quickly with a different end such as if the federal government acted after the war with broad brush actions such as mass hangings and mass wealth redistribution of the kind that are vastly more popular with the current generation of historians in the US then were popular options with elites and the public at the time. Taking those steps means the party in power getting on the wrong side of public opinion in the North in 1865. The press in the North in the two months after Appomattox including much of the Republican press had turned it into practically a holy event replete with holy imagery which underlined how much they wanted the peace to hold.
How events transpire to create a major insurgency matter in regards to the question, because if North feels like their own politicians overplayed their hand it would mean something very different politically then if the war had ended differently in the last several months and they felt the South had on their own committed to continue to war by a new means.
Insurgencies can start relatively small and get worse as well from one year to the other. Lets imagine Lincoln and Lee each die a month before major combat ends. Longstreet tries to surrender. Thousands in the army take to the Hills and then thousands more in other theaters, but the rest do surrender. That isn't a major insurgency by any means, but it could turn into one after a year or two if not handled well.
Insurgencies come in different shapes and sizes so if you are talking a major insurgency it would really need a different end to the war. Most soldiers were going to emulate what they saw Lee do at the end assuming they saw him do anything.
A major insurgency I suspect could only have started quickly with a different end such as if the federal government acted after the war with broad brush actions such as mass hangings and mass wealth redistribution of the kind that are vastly more popular with the current generation of historians in the US then were popular options with elites and the public at the time. Taking those steps means the party in power getting on the wrong side of public opinion in the North in 1865. The press in the North in the two months after Appomattox including much of the Republican press had turned it into practically a holy event replete with holy imagery which underlined how much they wanted the peace to hold.
How events transpire to create a major insurgency matter in regards to the question, because if North feels like their own politicians overplayed their hand it would mean something very different politically then if the war had ended differently in the last several months and they felt the South had on their own committed to continue to war by a new means.
Insurgencies can start relatively small and get worse as well from one year to the other. Lets imagine Lincoln and Lee each die a month before major combat ends. Longstreet tries to surrender. Thousands in the army take to the Hills and then thousands more in other theaters, but the rest do surrender. That isn't a major insurgency by any means, but it could turn into one after a year or two if not handled well.
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So maybe in different parts of the South regular divisions of considerable numbers under their original commanders go into Guerillia while maintaining a considerable hierachy. Maybe they save artillery pieces aswell. So maybe they are joines by former veterans returning home. So they finanxe themselves by robbing banks and trains and also recruting boys from the South into their ranks. Maybe these troops still see themselves as the legitimate government in exile. Of cause these troops age and by 1900 there wouldnt be much space for anncontinued insurgency like that. And that only if they have Hiro Onada like commitment and fanatic devoution to the cause.
There were people like your talking about. They were outlaws like the James Gang. There wasn't much of a future in it.
Problem is that all the leading generals involved had been trained in conventional warfare more or less Napoleonic.
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Then it would not be lead by the generals, but by local commanders.
I am sure they could learn a lot about guerrilla war from the Indian tribes on the CSA side.
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So the lower ranked commanders are somehow supposed to ignore the orders of their commanders all the while the civilian government in Richmond is just going to let them? The CSA was incredibly classist. This would never be acceptable.
Jefferson Davis was ordering everyone to keep fighting, but all major commands laid down their arms. The war was lost, there was no constructive point in shedding more blood.
That poster was referring to a guerilla war from the very beginning.
If you want a 10-year guerilla war you need to start with the resources the CSA had at the start of the conflict.
Union army is trained to find fight a conventional war. Trying to track down large bands on guerilla bands all over the CSA would take a very long time and cost a lot of money.
You would need a POD to change the minds of the leaders in the CSA to accept such a radical change in strategy.
Could end up like the British fighting the Boer commandos in the Boer war.
Boer commando - Wikipedia
How would in change Reconstruction?
I think the main goal of Reconstruction would be to reunite the states and ensure no states tried to secede again.
I cannot see the aims of changing.
A ten-year guerrilla war and the reprisals a conventional union army would inflict could help forge a national identity in the CSA that would be hard to erase.
The former CSA could become like Ireland a place where there are rebellions every 40 years approx.
This could lead to early control on weapons and the right to bear arms in the CSA and a much longer Reconstruction period.
It could become like the Vietnam war, a war with no front lines and where friend and foe are hard to tell apart.
A war that long and the military occupation after could be ruinously expensive and weaken the US.
I think the main goal of Reconstruction would be to reunite the states and ensure no states tried to secede again.
I cannot see the aims of changing.
A ten-year guerrilla war and the reprisals a conventional union army would inflict could help forge a national identity in the CSA that would be hard to erase.
The former CSA could become like Ireland a place where there are rebellions every 40 years approx.
This could lead to early control on weapons and the right to bear arms in the CSA and a much longer Reconstruction period.
It could become like the Vietnam war, a war with no front lines and where friend and foe are hard to tell apart.
A war that long and the military occupation after could be ruinously expensive and weaken the US.
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Yes, I thkugjt something akin to the James Gang but in division strenght or at least several hundred men still upholding military ranks. Mostly maybe mounted infantry or cavalry tjat practices raiding and ambushes. So maybe more remote areas maybe insurgents in the more Southern Territories even flee to Mexico border to gather anew before attacking. With time these rebels also would morph into ordinary outlaw gangs.
Late 19th Century Redshirt Rebellion. Red Shirt had been a white supremeist Paramilitary Organisation. Maybe something akin to that ? A second genertion Southern Guerillia movement ?
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Some kind of Confederate Hiroo Onada would be hard to imagine but who knows.
The Red Shirt Rebellion in the late 19th Century had many Confederate veterans in their ranks.
Such resistance was never practical. In the best terrain for guerrilla activity (the mountains) the population was predominantly Unionist. Where secessionist sentiment was strongest, the population was mostly blacks. One should also note that by 1865, a lot of white southerners had turned against the CSA with its endless demands for goods and military service. Desertion and draft resistance was endemic; so was resistance to taxes and requisitions. Guerrilla forces survive by recruiting or conscripting fighters and requisitioning food and supplies. The populace often balks, and takes sides with the government.
Post-War guerrillas could plague the Yankees for a while, but the consequences would include further damage to already devastated countryside, and retaliation against landowners and other leaders. Also, very probably, the empowerment of black military or paramilitary forces as Union auxiliaries.
Certainly guerrillas could not maintain control of the black population. The 13th Amendment might be delayed, due to the difficulty of getting any sort of ratification in former CSA states, but only three would be required to reach 3/4, if all northern and border states ratified. However, nearly all slaves in the Deep South were freed de jure by the Emancipation Proclamation. With the fall of the CSA government, that condition would become de facto as well.
Post-War guerrillas could plague the Yankees for a while, but the consequences would include further damage to already devastated countryside, and retaliation against landowners and other leaders. Also, very probably, the empowerment of black military or paramilitary forces as Union auxiliaries.
Certainly guerrillas could not maintain control of the black population. The 13th Amendment might be delayed, due to the difficulty of getting any sort of ratification in former CSA states, but only three would be required to reach 3/4, if all northern and border states ratified. However, nearly all slaves in the Deep South were freed de jure by the Emancipation Proclamation. With the fall of the CSA government, that condition would become de facto as well.